What do you think?
Rate this book
Springer's Progress
Here comes Lucien Springer. forty-seven. Still handsome though muchly vodka’d novelist, currently abashed by acute creative dysfunction. Sole preoccupation amid these artistic pursuit of fair women. Springer is a randy incorrigible who is guided by only one inflexible no protracted affairs. And thus he has slyly sustained eighteen years of marriage. Enter, then, Jessica Cornford. almost half of Lucien’s. Lush of body and roguish of mind. Whereupon what begins as bawdy interlude becomes perhaps the most untidy extramarital letch in literature. Rabelaisian yet uncannily wise, both ribald and bittersweet, Springer’s Progress is that rarest of gifts, a mature love story. It is an also exuberant linguistic romp, a novel saturated with irrepressible wordplay and outrageous literary thieveries. Contemplating his own work, Lucien Springer modestly restricts his ambition to “a phrase or three worth some lonely pretty girl’s midnight underlining.” For the discerning reader, David Markson has contrived a hundred of them.
234 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1977
1 person is currently reading
435 people want to read
About the author
David Markson
24 books349 followersDavid Markson was an American novelist, born David Merrill Markson in Albany, New York. He is the author of several postmodern novels, including This is Not a Novel, Springer's Progress, and Wittgenstein's Mistress. His most recent work, The Last Novel, was published in 2007 and received a positive review in the New York Times, which called it "a real tour de force."
Markson's work is characterized by an unconventional approach to narration and plot. While his early works may draw on the modernist tradition of William Faulkner and Malcolm Lowry, Markson says his later novels are "literally crammed with literary and artistic anecdotes" and "nonlinear, discontinuous, collage-like, an assemblage."
Dalkey Archive Press has published several of his novels. In December 2006, publishers Shoemaker & Hoard republished two of Markson's early crime novels Epitaph for a Tramp and Epitaph for a Dead Beat in one volume.
In addition to his novels, he has published a book of poetry and a critical study of Malcolm Lowry.
The movie Dirty Dingus Magee, starring Frank Sinatra, is based on Markson's first novel, The Ballad of Dingus Magee, an anti-Western. He wrote three crime novels early in his career.
Educated at Union College and Columbia University, Markson began his writing career as a journalist and book editor, periodically taking up work as a college professor at Columbia University, Long Island University, and The New School.
Markson died in his New York City, West Village apartment.
Markson's work is characterized by an unconventional approach to narration and plot. While his early works may draw on the modernist tradition of William Faulkner and Malcolm Lowry, Markson says his later novels are "literally crammed with literary and artistic anecdotes" and "nonlinear, discontinuous, collage-like, an assemblage."
Dalkey Archive Press has published several of his novels. In December 2006, publishers Shoemaker & Hoard republished two of Markson's early crime novels Epitaph for a Tramp and Epitaph for a Dead Beat in one volume.
In addition to his novels, he has published a book of poetry and a critical study of Malcolm Lowry.
The movie Dirty Dingus Magee, starring Frank Sinatra, is based on Markson's first novel, The Ballad of Dingus Magee, an anti-Western. He wrote three crime novels early in his career.
Educated at Union College and Columbia University, Markson began his writing career as a journalist and book editor, periodically taking up work as a college professor at Columbia University, Long Island University, and The New School.
Markson died in his New York City, West Village apartment.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 36 reviews
November 21, 2013
I am torn with this one, oscillating between pleasure and boredom.
Pleasure in the hard-edged, clipped prose, the humour (including some almost CBR worthy puns), and the meta-games going on.
Boredom in the masturbatory nature of the plot, the old saw of middle-aged lust and fantasies of being so potent that sexy young women are given multiple orgasms by your bedroom talent…
Fun, at times, and worth pulling off the shelf, particularly to see a writer on a path to a unique voice, and to producing some real works of genius (there are a couple of passages in here which read like premonitions of his style to come).
But, for the love of god, I do wish these writers would get their wanking done before they start typing.
Pleasure in the hard-edged, clipped prose, the humour (including some almost CBR worthy puns), and the meta-games going on.
Boredom in the masturbatory nature of the plot, the old saw of middle-aged lust and fantasies of being so potent that sexy young women are given multiple orgasms by your bedroom talent…
Fun, at times, and worth pulling off the shelf, particularly to see a writer on a path to a unique voice, and to producing some real works of genius (there are a couple of passages in here which read like premonitions of his style to come).
But, for the love of god, I do wish these writers would get their wanking done before they start typing.
August 13, 2021
..ha ho he hum .. 2nd reading fun fun fun .. leave same as last review comments .. that
"While Jessica Cornford has bourbon hair and hyacinth eyes and an opulent Orphic ass. And he an "arrant travestying bastard." You could end the sum right there and have it. Butt you'd miss all the fun and pun that wizzes around that nucleus of potentialities that do come hither in this rompy tale of writer's block. That's the "Springer's Progress" as when protag./rump worshiper Lucian Springer finally breaks through his addled (vodka supping) ennui and begins work on his new novel though it's art mirroring life 'cause he's writing about his ongoing affair w/that callipygian Jess Cornford whilst his supporting naïf wife/kids titter about lightly pecking at him completely unawares.
This is early Markson where he's actually following traditional novel writing template of characters, plot, storyline, etc., before he ventured off into his known for anecdotal fragment novels. He even begins here in "SP" to monkey with that future method as spliced here/there throughout are indeed those types of clumped sentences. There's also lots of witty allusions and slightly skewed lifting's of other famous novels' popular lines, quotes, mentions. It's Jim Harrison on butt hunt all over again only trussed up in POMO style. Geezer gets da girl; geezer loses da girl kinda spaz mataz. I liked it the way I like JH's. It wouldn't take a Freudian genious to figure why.
"While Jessica Cornford has bourbon hair and hyacinth eyes and an opulent Orphic ass. And he an "arrant travestying bastard." You could end the sum right there and have it. Butt you'd miss all the fun and pun that wizzes around that nucleus of potentialities that do come hither in this rompy tale of writer's block. That's the "Springer's Progress" as when protag./rump worshiper Lucian Springer finally breaks through his addled (vodka supping) ennui and begins work on his new novel though it's art mirroring life 'cause he's writing about his ongoing affair w/that callipygian Jess Cornford whilst his supporting naïf wife/kids titter about lightly pecking at him completely unawares.
This is early Markson where he's actually following traditional novel writing template of characters, plot, storyline, etc., before he ventured off into his known for anecdotal fragment novels. He even begins here in "SP" to monkey with that future method as spliced here/there throughout are indeed those types of clumped sentences. There's also lots of witty allusions and slightly skewed lifting's of other famous novels' popular lines, quotes, mentions. It's Jim Harrison on butt hunt all over again only trussed up in POMO style. Geezer gets da girl; geezer loses da girl kinda spaz mataz. I liked it the way I like JH's. It wouldn't take a Freudian genious to figure why.
February 14, 2012
At some point David Markson seems to have become physically unable to write linear sentences, stifled by the anxiety of influence, or the agonising labour of such a well-trodden enterprise, and his failure to do so. Eventually, his novels would break down into nuggets of trivia, lost forever to the bookish world of highbrow literary allusiveness that engulfed most of his postmodernist friends. This novel is written in a berserk shorthand that flits between a sardonic narrator, a close third-person narrator, and long passages of stylised dialogue—all packed tight with literary allusions, direct quotes, clever wordplay, Latin snippets, and all manner of flighty lexical indulgence. The plot is Moss-thin: a writer has an affair with an attractive woman whose arse he admires. Thus begins a novel that groans with cringing sexual puns and romps, a borderline sexist agenda, and an almost intolerable series of staged comedic dialogues that go nowhere. This technique condenses the long-winded indulgence in similar novels of the 1970s, making it harder to soup through than a horny Roth or a panty Updike. Original and fun nonetheless.
September 18, 2013
Not the Markson I love. I'm a huge fan of The Last Novel and Wittgenstein's Mistress, but I found Springer's Progress to be unrewarding. Purely from a reader response point-of-view, the main character was irritating. Yes, he is kind of an asshole. Assholes are fine in literature because they are honest. But irritating for the duration is unacceptable. Sure, people scrape their nails on chalkboards in real life but would you listen to a song of someone doing it for 10 minutes? My issues with the character were compounded by a distinctive and irritating writing style. When the premise at the end was revealed, I did find it to be a clever conceit, but clever didn't save the entire story leading up to that point.
First, Springer. He’s a writer, mostly fiction...various novels of some modest critical acclaim. Two pre-teen children, a wife who is a literary agent. So far, so good. He's got "writer's block." All right, a stereotypical writer's flaw but tolerable. He hasn't written for years and is living off his wife's salary. Sponging, really, because he's not even making an effort. Instead, he spends just about every waking minute at the pub. (c.f. "What do you call a writer who can't write? An alcoholic.") And chasing women. He has brief affairs as frequently as possible. An alcoholic writer with writer's block who cheats on his wife as frequently as possible. And most despicably to my mind…what made him loathsome...he barely acknowledges the existence of his own children. The children are there in passing for a few moments, but he has nothing to do with them. And Markson, frankly, doesn't even seem to reference them in any significant way. There is enough hemming and hawing in guilt over the affairs (mild guilt), but very little attention paid to the children. As if writers have more important things to do. And this angered me quite a lot. It could be simply my reader response, but I felt that while Markson recognized Springer was a cad, he didn’t really consider the relationship between father and children to be significant enough to apply to the equation.
And yet, despite all this, the book is, for the most part, a comedy. Even an erotic comedy, with a smattering of graphic sexual detail. The style of comedy rests primarily on exaggeratedly witty banter between intellectual literary-types. I found it rather farcical (i.e. far-fetched) for the most part. If you can imagine a couple of English professors spouting off one-liner double entendres about obscure classics, then you get the idea. Sometimes humorous, mostly cringeworthy.
Near the beginning, Springer sleeps with a young writer named Jessica Cornford, and for the first time becomes utterly obsessed with a woman. In particular, her ass. I am not kidding. He is obsessed with her body and her ass. And then he runs away from her because he’s scared he likes her too much. After that, he becomes incredibly jealous of her other relationships (she is, it turns out, highly promiscuous) and begins a cat & mouse game of trying to sleep with her again, but she teases and taunts him repeatedly. He seems to think he's in love with her, but he is really just obsessed with her and can't seem to tell the difference. Further, the novel seems to imply that she slept with him but he is blind to this.
All in all, I found just about everything about Springer unsympathetic. He came across as a big waste of space, which made it difficult to enjoy the comedy. Sponging off the wife he's cheating on. Not caring about his kids. Jealous and pathetic.
And then on top of that, I found the style of the writing somewhat grating. Style: clipped. The story is told with emphasis on dialogue. Some internal thoughts and modest scenic description. It rolls forward with an odd abbreviated style, representing a novel that was written in outline. Written all in a tumble and a rush. Admittedly, at the end of the story, when the "concept" was revealed, the style made sense. But that didn't make it any more pleasant to experience it.
I use the word "concept" very specifically here; this is definitely an experimental book, but with one very specific experiment driving it. I hesitate to call it a gimmick, but it is definitely a one-trick premise. I will divulge it here:
If you are new to Markson, I recommend going elsewhere to truly appreciate him. And he is great. I recommend again: The Last Novel and Wittgenstein's Mistress But a better title for Springer’s Progress would be Markson’s Backsliding.
First, Springer. He’s a writer, mostly fiction...various novels of some modest critical acclaim. Two pre-teen children, a wife who is a literary agent. So far, so good. He's got "writer's block." All right, a stereotypical writer's flaw but tolerable. He hasn't written for years and is living off his wife's salary. Sponging, really, because he's not even making an effort. Instead, he spends just about every waking minute at the pub. (c.f. "What do you call a writer who can't write? An alcoholic.") And chasing women. He has brief affairs as frequently as possible. An alcoholic writer with writer's block who cheats on his wife as frequently as possible. And most despicably to my mind…what made him loathsome...he barely acknowledges the existence of his own children. The children are there in passing for a few moments, but he has nothing to do with them. And Markson, frankly, doesn't even seem to reference them in any significant way. There is enough hemming and hawing in guilt over the affairs (mild guilt), but very little attention paid to the children. As if writers have more important things to do. And this angered me quite a lot. It could be simply my reader response, but I felt that while Markson recognized Springer was a cad, he didn’t really consider the relationship between father and children to be significant enough to apply to the equation.
And yet, despite all this, the book is, for the most part, a comedy. Even an erotic comedy, with a smattering of graphic sexual detail. The style of comedy rests primarily on exaggeratedly witty banter between intellectual literary-types. I found it rather farcical (i.e. far-fetched) for the most part. If you can imagine a couple of English professors spouting off one-liner double entendres about obscure classics, then you get the idea. Sometimes humorous, mostly cringeworthy.
Near the beginning, Springer sleeps with a young writer named Jessica Cornford, and for the first time becomes utterly obsessed with a woman. In particular, her ass. I am not kidding. He is obsessed with her body and her ass. And then he runs away from her because he’s scared he likes her too much. After that, he becomes incredibly jealous of her other relationships (she is, it turns out, highly promiscuous) and begins a cat & mouse game of trying to sleep with her again, but she teases and taunts him repeatedly. He seems to think he's in love with her, but he is really just obsessed with her and can't seem to tell the difference. Further, the novel seems to imply that she slept with him but he is blind to this.
All in all, I found just about everything about Springer unsympathetic. He came across as a big waste of space, which made it difficult to enjoy the comedy. Sponging off the wife he's cheating on. Not caring about his kids. Jealous and pathetic.
And then on top of that, I found the style of the writing somewhat grating. Style: clipped. The story is told with emphasis on dialogue. Some internal thoughts and modest scenic description. It rolls forward with an odd abbreviated style, representing a novel that was written in outline. Written all in a tumble and a rush. Admittedly, at the end of the story, when the "concept" was revealed, the style made sense. But that didn't make it any more pleasant to experience it.
I use the word "concept" very specifically here; this is definitely an experimental book, but with one very specific experiment driving it. I hesitate to call it a gimmick, but it is definitely a one-trick premise. I will divulge it here:
If you are new to Markson, I recommend going elsewhere to truly appreciate him. And he is great. I recommend again: The Last Novel and Wittgenstein's Mistress But a better title for Springer’s Progress would be Markson’s Backsliding.
September 7, 2021
роман-каламбур про письменника, який не пише роман, а пише різну маячню, перероблює відомі цитати, бухає, має дружину і двох дітей, а ще коханку, із якою намагається зайнятися анальним сексом. проблема з коханкою в тому, що вона - письменниця і на відміну від нього пише багато і краще. p.s. ще ніколи у світовій літературі анальний секс не описували так весело.
September 8, 2015
The writing in this book is incredible. The prose is a dense Joycean thicket of puns, wordplay, literary allusions, and ribaldry. The writing style alone earns this one 4 stars. The plot and characters are... not on that same level. There's just not that much interesting about a married man having an affair that seems largely based on his admiration for a young woman's callipygian virtues. The protagonist, Springer, is basically unlikeable (I believe intentionally so) and it's dreary to read his endless selfishness and loutish behavior to his spouse, kids, friends, lovers, etc. I think the joke is about the self-centered nature of the writing process, and the book veers towards a really interesting conclusion as the fictional Springer's novel converges with the end of Markson's novel, but the resolution I hoped for never materializes. It would have been wonderful if it had turned out the entire plot was Springer's intricate fantasy with his wife as willing participant, and there are a few hints in the text that it could be so, but I don't think the final chapters bear out that theory. Instead, in the end it's another self-indulgent white guy lecherously holding forth about a woman's body with no regard for the moral consequences of his acts. The sainted patience of his wife and lover in the face of such stupidity vaulted the characters in this book far outside of reality into some twilight realm of demi-parody, but it's still too tiresomely close to reality to bite as it should. I'm ecstatic about the prose, but I wish Markson had found a better mold for his white hot, molten language.
August 23, 2023
"So which fucking fucker is she fucking?" is a question near the end of this tedious story. The correct answer to which is "Who fucking cares?"
Definitely my least favorite Markson novel, in which the faithless horndog of the title goes gaga for a younger writer, generally treats his wife of nearly two decades with callous indifference, is barely aware of his children, and obsesses over the other lovers of the younger writer. And mourns an old girlfriend who he manages to bed early in the novel. And makes atrocious convoluted puns, maybe the most enjoyable material in the book, aside from the bits that anticipate the four great novels that were to follow this one.
I was speaking with a friend yesterday who knows and has worked with Don De Lillo, and I mentioned that I respect and revere De Lillo for several reasons, and one of them is that he never saw fit to write a novel about a hormone addled white male heterosexual novelist fucking around in the West Village in the 50s-60s-70s.
Definitely my least favorite Markson novel, in which the faithless horndog of the title goes gaga for a younger writer, generally treats his wife of nearly two decades with callous indifference, is barely aware of his children, and obsesses over the other lovers of the younger writer. And mourns an old girlfriend who he manages to bed early in the novel. And makes atrocious convoluted puns, maybe the most enjoyable material in the book, aside from the bits that anticipate the four great novels that were to follow this one.
I was speaking with a friend yesterday who knows and has worked with Don De Lillo, and I mentioned that I respect and revere De Lillo for several reasons, and one of them is that he never saw fit to write a novel about a hormone addled white male heterosexual novelist fucking around in the West Village in the 50s-60s-70s.
December 10, 2014
"listen, blotterbrain, try to be sober for seventeen seconds. your problematical ending beside the point, what do you ultimately want out of this coprophagous excursus?
oh, words, obviously.
meaning?
play a little. with luck a phrase or three worth some lonely pretty girl's midnight underlining.
what've phrases got to do with the cost of smoked salmon in abu dhabi?
haven't i acknowledged that? just once, can't a character be the product of his own fucked-up head rather than society?"
oh, words, obviously.
meaning?
play a little. with luck a phrase or three worth some lonely pretty girl's midnight underlining.
what've phrases got to do with the cost of smoked salmon in abu dhabi?
haven't i acknowledged that? just once, can't a character be the product of his own fucked-up head rather than society?"
June 2, 2011
The first of Markson's good period, when he was letting go of old bad habits and hadn't had the time to embrace new ones. Very funny and filled with lots of Buster Keaton-ish sex.
June 25, 2012
Certainly not stercoraceous!
July 17, 2021
3 1/2, more like. An improvement over the ill-digested, self-important modernism of ”Going Down,” this is much funnier, lighter, more in the vein of John Barth’s mid-career metafiction: ”Sabbatical” or perhaps the lovers’ dialogues in ”Chimera”. However, like other tongue-in-cheek 70s/80s novels about blocked middle-aged male writers who replenish their imagination by obsessing about the divine flesh and sharp wit of a younger woman (see under muse), this one hasn’t aged so well. It’s not apparent here that Markson could write about women as thoughtfully as he later did in ”Wittgenstein’s Mistress”. Still worth a try, though, for his stylistic breadth (each of these earlier novels is different in that regard), the astounding range of his vocabulary (think ”stercoraceous”) and the creative use to which he can put allusions, literary and otherwise (of which there are 5-10 per page).
Read
January 15, 2024It’s hard to know what to make of this. It definitely pales in comparison to Markson’s later masterpieces. Especially given the ‘70s “I have seeeeex” plot points, which I get are satirical (after all doesn't "Springer's Progress" sound almost comically like a shitty '70s novel, q.v. "Rifkin's Dilemma" in the Nick Kroll Oh Hello sketch), but still… it grates. Markson’s wit is there, and towards the end you get more of a portent of things to come, but I think there’s probably a reason I came to this particular volume a bit later. For most of you, you can stick with Wittgenstein’s Mistress and The Last Novel.
August 28, 2019
The first half was 2 stars, second half 4 stars, so here we are. Annoying at times (man's obsession with sex sooo boring over so many pages), much more interesting when it starts to turn toward his later style, with anecdotes about the lives and deaths of writers and artists, and the trick of turning the novel in on itself...
If this had been the first Markson I'd read, I wouldn't have gotten any further. Maybe 2.5 stars after all.
If this had been the first Markson I'd read, I wouldn't have gotten any further. Maybe 2.5 stars after all.
October 27, 2017
If you think that Markson wasn't making fun of the trope of 'older man fucks nubile young babes on the reg,' you're reading it wrong. It's the 70s; lighten the fuck up.
October 10, 2018
Joycean pastiche in the first half. More post-modern without being wanky about it in the second half. Very good overall. Would recommend.
March 2, 2017
A common trope filtered through Markson's playful witticism meta-machine = a good time. And surprisingly touching in parts. (Faux-Markson wordplay attempt intended.)
August 29, 2010
The protagonist, Springer, around whom the novel revolves, is a writer suffering from the "block", who is cannot let go an opportunity to have an affair with any woman in sight, who loves his wife as he continues to cheat on her, has the most distateful sexual habits, and pouts Shakespeare, Kipling, Joyce, Homer and even the Bible when he is in the throes of his sexual lust.
He meets his match in the 25-year old Jessica, another classics-pouting writer, who sends Springer into the depths of jealousy with her openly declared affairs with other men while she is seeing our hero on the side.
Springer, who historically never gets too close to his love interests, goes all ga-ga for his youthful mistress, falls in love, and has to reconcile Jessica and his wife in his altered life, while regaining his ability to write again - ho, hum for plot.
The narrative style is the hardest to digest - a copy editor would not know where to start. The grammar is quasi-Shakesperean, Joycean and others thrown in for effect, and therefore jerky all around. Mercifully the chapters are short and allow surfacing for air.I felt in places that the narrator was an impish Cupid casting comments at Skinner and his actions. I also learned a lot of new words and marvelled at the authors ability to invent new ones.
I think that the author had a lot of fun writing this novel and did not really care if the reader got it our not. Being a writer myself, I thought this was awfully conceited on his part
He meets his match in the 25-year old Jessica, another classics-pouting writer, who sends Springer into the depths of jealousy with her openly declared affairs with other men while she is seeing our hero on the side.
Springer, who historically never gets too close to his love interests, goes all ga-ga for his youthful mistress, falls in love, and has to reconcile Jessica and his wife in his altered life, while regaining his ability to write again - ho, hum for plot.
The narrative style is the hardest to digest - a copy editor would not know where to start. The grammar is quasi-Shakesperean, Joycean and others thrown in for effect, and therefore jerky all around. Mercifully the chapters are short and allow surfacing for air.I felt in places that the narrator was an impish Cupid casting comments at Skinner and his actions. I also learned a lot of new words and marvelled at the authors ability to invent new ones.
I think that the author had a lot of fun writing this novel and did not really care if the reader got it our not. Being a writer myself, I thought this was awfully conceited on his part
January 4, 2012
not sure. probably missed something. it seems like, & i'm gonna sound like a dick here, markson went to edit an actual novel when he was stoned off his rocker & that is where his modern parsing of language went to. i get the need to tone things down instead of over verbosing (if that's a word), but in a way markson went both directions, unsuccessfully so. this book is no where near the greatness of wittgenstein's mistress, which was pure genius. springer's progress sort of spirals away at all ends and is not, as the times called it "exuberantly joycean." it did, however, have moments of redemption of the highest literary measure. too bad they weren't sustained.
September 3, 2010
A guy on Twitter said read this, it is genius. I would say there is a glimmer in the style. I have read other Markson novels with less plot and sex. All of his books are stuffed with knowledge and intelligence and word play. The protagonist is an unspeakably foul and deranged writer in midlife crisis who spouts amusing literary references on every page. It captures a certain kind of helpless male passion. It made my liver hurt. I was gad to know him, at a distance, and not be him.
June 26, 2011
A good friend whose opinion I trust recommended this author to me and this was my first attempt reading him thanks to the local library. I found this novel boring and tedious - maybe it was the wrong place to start or maybe this author is not for me. I thought the main character was a jerk but not interesting enough of one to make the plot (get out of a writer's block and achieve anal sex with young woman) worthwhile.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 22, 2010
this may go down to four stars---
the writing is balls; rarely seen so much balls in style (possibly the only way it could be compared to Joyce) and, in that, it alone deserves five. but voice and distinction? overly impressive... then there's an unashamed copout of an ending that i love too much but might hate soon. anyway, not many will like it.
the writing is balls; rarely seen so much balls in style (possibly the only way it could be compared to Joyce) and, in that, it alone deserves five. but voice and distinction? overly impressive... then there's an unashamed copout of an ending that i love too much but might hate soon. anyway, not many will like it.
April 19, 2008
This is a less experimental novel from Markson, but the intelligence still leaps from the page. It's also damn sexy. A blurb calls it Joycean. Yes, I can see that. Funny, allusive, dirty, sensual. (But don't be scared off. It's a lot easier, quicker read than anything ol' Jamesy ever wrote.)
August 23, 2010
i liked that it focused on a romantic relationship and that it was honest/explicit about sex and other things. i didn't like some of the show-offy language, which was anachronistic and didn't seem to serve any purpose other than attempting to 'legitimize' the book and/or the author.
April 7, 2008
This book is simply a brilliantly inventive, hilarious and earthy linguistic tour de force.
August 13, 2008
This is the first thing i've read from markson. real funny. I understood maybe 25% of his literary references and such...but the language and the dialogue are something to behold.
July 26, 2009
I liked the writing - smutty writer and his many trysts - but I felt I've read it before, and it's not better than other degenerate-writer novels.
January 9, 2015
Markson is dirty and lush, but unobtrusively, woozily honest. The book reads aloud like a night spent whoring with Melville.
April 26, 2011
arroz is arroz is arroz.
August 21, 2012
This book changed how I think about fictional writing. It blew my mind -- what it did with language. And it made me laugh and care, too. Extraordinary.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 36 reviews